Wasn't planning on it, but yesterday Quzqo and I ended up going to an all-day open horse show about 50 miles NE of here! We were invited along Friday night, and since I have a will of wet linguini, I agreed to go! NEVER mind I've barely ridden the horse all week, NEVER mind he hasn't had a bath in 2 weeks, never mind he had 1/4" long whiskers and all my show clothes
still hadn't been washed (saw no reason to hurry with that task...) Nothing like agreeing to go to a horse show 12 hours before departure time, yahoo!!!
Was easy to trim the whiskers and bridlepath, and happily he wasn't too dirty, having been caught outside in a day of heavy rains Thursday, and being left out in the pasture overnight (not being able to lay down in dirty bedding in his stall on a poop pile or such). Using that logic, after riding Friday night, I turned Himself back out to the pasture, so he'd stay clean and hopefully be tired the next day (he never sleeps well when he's left outside, lol)
As for the not having ridden in a week...well...we'll cross that bridge when we come to it, heh heh!
Got to the barn the next morning around 6 a.m. (GAAH!), figuring I'd have to hike out into the 30 acre pasture to catch the horse, happily he was walking down towards the gate/water just as I was walking out to get him, so didn't have to go far at all! He got to enjoy a hearty breakfast (which was actually his dinner from the previous night that he didn't get to eat since
he was outside in 30 acres of grass instead), and come loading time, he was in a pretty good mood! Every time he gets better and better at getting into the trailer...first he has to put on a little Drama Queen token protest, usually just planting his feet and refusing to move...then I have to back him up a few steps, fwapping him with the lead rope, then we try again and he walks right in. Totally ritualistic by now, just trying to prove a point I think, LOL, silly boy.
We ended up in the bustling burg of Kalkaska, Michigan (population 102 I think, used to be a total redneck town, before the oil boom of the 1980's, now it's back to being a redneck town), at their tiny run down fairgrounds. The horse show was the official county fair horse show, which they hold BEFORE the actual fair...I was hoping the fair would be on, so I could look
at exhibits and eat junk food after my classes, but no such luck, place was empty except for the horse show.
Which was basically, a piece of crap. Everyone I heard agreed...I swear, I'd NEVER been to such a crappy horse show, real or model! They had ONE working water spigot for the whole fairgrounds, which was centrally located, but still a wretched hike when you're weighted down with filled water buckets. The water to the wash racks was shut off, so you couldn't do any last-minute horse-bathing or touch-ups. NO bathrooms, just two porta-pots, one of which hadn't been pumped, and baby, it was filling up fast, and NO amount of tasteful dark blue water could mask what was heaped UP in that thing! GAAAH! (I envied the horses which could poop and pee right where they were standing). Food concessions were negligible, and from the looks of the high school Booster trailer it was run from, I wasn't going to take the risk.
The arena was quite nice, good clay-limestone-sand footing, good sized, and they had a nice warm-up ring. The judge was a nice woman who appreciated Arabians and Morgans...there were a fair amount of Morgans, beautiful Saddleseat types...but as usual, the show was dominated by Paints and QHs. Not an App to be seen, only two Arabians, and a mule.
Like the previous shows, we stuck to halter and the Novice classes. There were three in Quzqo's halter...a beautiful Morgan gelding (HUGE thing!), Quzqo, and a lovely chestnut Arabian. Quzqo had set up beautifully for me in practice before the class...you guessed it...once we were in the ring, he DELIBERATELY (I know it was deliberate, he had a glint in his eye) splayed
his legs every which way and would not stand still, kept sneaking forwards or backwards or sideways, I don't think I got him into anything close to a proper Arabian set-up once!! GRRGH...revenge for me moussing his forelock, I know that's what it was! I was happily surprised that we took 2nd place though!! Not last, LOL (course the chestnut Arabian, which took 3rd, had the rattiest tail I've ever seen, like it'd been chewed off, poor thing...)
Which meant we got to go into the showback for Champion...had no chance in hell at that of course, it was won by a magnificent (ho hum) dappled palomino Morgan stallion...phew! But of course for that, Quzqo set up perfectly for me and stood like a rock...Hm.
Had plenty of time to do warm ups at lunch, since it dawned on me I could warm him up in my halter clothes, didn't HAVE to change into the English garb right then and there...he worked quite nice for me, but VERY sluggish and, well, tired, LOL...at least he didn't try to run off at any point, too sleepy and worn out from camping in the pasture, heh heh.
Didn't bother doing Huntseat Equitation, past performances have told me that I'm either not very good or it's hard to be good with a horse that acts like Quzqo, so saved myself $4 there. That also gave me more time to change clothes, relax, have a snack, braid up the horse's mane, etc. We did do Novice Huntseat Pleasure 19/over, thankfully walk/trot, (GLAD I'm not nervous about going into the arena any more, took long enough for that to wear off!).. Quzqo did VERY well, other than me having to continuously urge him forward at both the walk and trot...I know if I didn't keep after him, he'd have coasted to a standstill all on his own. A few times I did get him into a lovely wonderful floating balanced trot, once at least I KNOW the judge was looking right at us when he did it...which is why we placed FIRST!! WhooHOOO!! (4 entries, but still...).A few classes later we went into the Novice Step-Up, which is an open Novice class but with cantering...like the last show, I was the oldest entrant, since the other women from my Novice class were too chicken (or else didn't want to compete against kids...I have no such qualms, heh heh). There were 8 or so in this group, including our barn owner's 5 yr old granddaughter ...yep, competing against kindergartners, that's me! Quzqo did fine at the walk, and trot, but they wanted the canter from a trot...I slowed him down to a walk before realizing what I did, and had a heck of a time getting him into a canter from the walk (we CAN do it, but usually when he's more energetic), once he got going he did VERY well, nice and balanced. Going the other direction he went right into the canter, but then decided to VEER across the arena (but NOT near the judge this time, LOL)...took a lot of spur and rein to get him back to the rail, once he got into the softer footing he slowed right down into a sweeeet balanced canter! We then trotted into the lineup, and he backed VERY good (for Quzqo). Long story short, we placed THIRD out of 8! And I know for a fact the two girls who beat us have been showing for years, and the first placer has a lovely mature professionaly trained QH...u-huh. For the record, we did beat Bob's granddaughter, heh heh.
Would have been a really fun, cool day, except...as we found out AFTER we'd paid our entry fees...there were NO RIBBONS! NONE! Not even for the leadline kiddies! Nothing!!! The show decided to pay out cash premiums, but ONLY if the class had more than 4 entries...under 4 entries, you got NOTHING! The Novice Classes got little novice-type paper vouchers they could turn in for cash at the office...which meant for our great First Place victory in Novice EP, I got a stupid inkjet-printed slip of paper for one effing DOLLAR! That was it. Got NOTHING for the halter class, and NOTHING for the Step-up, because the two Step-up classes had notations in the classlist that there were no premiums for them. The classlist also stated "Awards to 6th
place"...didn't say "placings" to 6th, it stated AWARDS. O, you bet there was much griping about that...there were a lot of kids there (and adult novices) who did good and got NOTHING to show for it!
Okay, sure, the big Professional Trainers might prefer money to more useless ribbons, but there were at most 10 people there who might have rooms full of ribbons and not want any more. I wager the other 30+ folks would have still appreciated SOMEthing to show for all their hard work and money spent. Gas is $2.47/gallon for regular around here, and a pick-up or SUV takes a LOT of gas to haul a loaded horse trailer 50 miles one way...GRR.
My show companion, who showed in the Western novice classes, was equally PO'd...she'd only had the mare for 8 weeks and was definitely after ribbons..we aren't active in the regional club, so we don't give a crap about the points earned (like the Big Names were)...c'mon, for $4/class they couldn't at least use leftover flats from last year's fair or something?? Our local fair holds a benefit fun show every month, and they have beautiful rosettes to 6th in every class, for the same $4/class.
Let's just say that the lack of any awards really put a kibosh on the whole experience. I wouldn't have awakened at 4 a.m. and gone through all that work for one lousy piece of ink-jet printed paper! I do plan to write a letter to the show organizers, and my companion has already decided she's never attending a show there again, even if they DO have ribbons. Coming from a die-hard shower, that's pretty harsh.
Yeah yeah, "it's for fun"...bullcrap, it's $12 down the crapper, plus gas and time...I could have had "fun" by sleeping in and going for a trail ride. I am pleased Quzqo did so well but still...I'd have been more pleased to be able to hang a first, second and third place ribbon on his Door of Fame at the barn.
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